Are "max-age" and "no-cache" from "Cache-Control" header mutually exclusive?

Question

Do "max-age" with a positive value and "no-cache" make sense? The documentation doesn't mention whether they are mutually exclusive https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Cache-Control

However org.springframework.http.CacheControl doesn't allow me to create an instance of it which would contain both of them. It has an interface that allows you to create an instance of CacheControl that would have either "max-age" or "no-cache".

public static CacheControl noCache() {
    CacheControl cc = new CacheControl();
    cc.noCache = true;
    return cc;
}


public static CacheControl maxAge(Duration maxAge) {
    CacheControl cc = new CacheControl();
    cc.maxAge = maxAge;
    return cc;
}

There is no no-static method for adding "no-cache" or "max-age" after instance creation. Is it on purpose and correct?

`max-age` with a greater than 0 value will not be considered if the `no-cache` is set first. [This post](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1383359/17173476) explains the difference between these two very well. — Vinz, Oct 19 '22 at 11:45

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 19 '22 at 14:54

No, it doesn't make sense to use a max-age with a positive value when you use no-cache. Since no-cache means "that the response MUST NOT be used to satisfy a subsequent request without successful validation on the origin server", the freshness time set by max-age won't have any effect.

There's also no reason—at least according to the standard—to use max-age=0 when using no-cache, though some people do it anyway, presumably due to a perceived benefit to backward compatibility.

Are "max-age" and "no-cache" from "Cache-Control" header mutually exclusive?

1 Answers1